Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections

Detailed Schedule

• Get ready
  • Y early September - MMS, admin newsletter with the schedule and plans, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions
  • Y Wed Sep 25 (1 month before) - Discussion with stewards about scrutineering (meta:SRM)
  • Y Wed Sep 25 (1 month before) - Run voter list script so we have plenty of time to get community feedback and later send to WMF to put into SecurePoll
  • Y Wed Sep 25 (1 month before) - Post in phab ticket (phab:T371454) to help remind WMF T&S about it
• Call for candidates
  • notifications via watchlist notice, T:CENT, WP:AN, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP, MMS, admin newsletter
  • Tue Oct 8 - Mon Oct 14 (7 days) - call for candidates:
  • Mon Oct 14 - The last day candidates can sign up is Oct 14
  • Tue Oct 15 - Mon Oct 23 (7 days) - intermission to set up SecurePoll with WMF, create candidate pages, etc.
• Discussion phase
  • create candidate pages
  • notifications via watchlist notice, T:CENT, WP:AN, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP
  • Tue Oct 22 - Thu Oct 24 (3 days) - discussion phase
  • Tue Oct 24 - absolute last day to question candidates on the official talk pages. locked down tight at the end of the day, per the RFC, which states that questions after the discussion phase are discouraged and must go to user talk
• Voting phase
  • notifications via watchlist notice, T:CENT, WP:AN, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP
  • Fri Oct 25 - Thu Oct 31 (7 days) - SecurePoll voting phase
• Post voting
  • scrutineering by stewards
  • results posted
  • inform bureaucrats so they can promote
  • give barnstars to folks who helped (e.g. created subpages, scrutineered, etc.)
• Next election prep
  • debrief: get feedback on how the election went and if the community wants to do it again on the talk page
  • how often should admin elections be? every 6 months?
  • the stewards have stated they do not want to be responsible for scrutineering this regularly due to bandwidth issues. who will do scrutineering?

Hashing out details

@Novem Linguae (cc @Sirdog) re [1], I see where you're coming from with making judgement calls on implementations, but I interpreted the close as meaning that there was consensus to run the election on the timeline specified in the proposal, and also that it did not preclude sorting out other final details (e.g. page structures, scrutineering, crat involvement) through Phase II. I'm probably being overly cautious, but I worry slightly about making decisions about important things like scrutineering without consensus, and whether it would be better to have a supplemental RfC in Phase II establishing a few additional important details (but not altering anything from Phase I, per the close). Thanks, Giraffer (talk) 17:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Howdy! I'm reading the close a bit differently. To me it seems the timeline is run trial election first -> tweak with additional RFCs second. The text I'm looking at is The community supports trying this proposal for 1 election, after which it will be reviewed in Phase II (note the order of the two events), and there is sufficient support to run the election as written.

A pre-election RFC or two may still happen organically as we discuss more on this talk page, but in my opinion pre-trial RFCs are not required by this close. Hope that sounds reasonable. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Yep, I agree that a pre-trial RfC isn't required, but were there to be any details not covered by the initial RfC which get disputed, I think it wouldn't hurt to have one to clarify. Giraffer (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Some things to iron out:

• Is there a volunteer ready to build the electoral rolls using the bespoke criteria? (The electoral roll is an explicit whitelist of voters) - C678 possibly (this will be a critical blocker/failure step)
• Who will be authorized to resolve discrepancies in the electoral roll ("Overrides")? - (As there is no "electoral commission" - perhaps any crat?)
• Especially if this is for one election, with plenty of notice, getting steward scrutineers shouldn't be a problem - just ask over at meta:SN, have the date and number of volunteers needed ready for the request. (Ideally, 30 days lead time+).

— xaosflux ^Talk 14:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Nominally, absent any further refinement of the process, the proposal specified that bureaucrats would manage the process, so yes, they would be authorized to make any decisions about the election. isaacl (talk) 22:19, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Regarding bullet #1, @Cyberpower678 sounded willing above. I'm more than happy to serve as a medium between SecurePoll and enwiki admin elections until a better process can be set up. If that ever needs to be handed off, I'd be willing to learn the process and software needed for it, hopefully under C678's tutelage. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:19, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Voting options

As Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections didn't specify the voting options, if there is an "abstain from voting on this candidate" option provided, I suggest that it be labeled "Abstain", rather than "Neutral" as in the arbitration committee elections. This would more accurately reflect the effect of that choice. isaacl (talk) 22:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

In this 2024 iteration, the part about tallying votes uses the typical formula based only on supports and opposes. Consequently, abstain or neutral would each have no effect. Although my first thought was that the name would make no difference either way (thus making me neutral?), on reflection, I think you are correct, because "abstain" more accurately describes what such a vote would (not) do. So I support this. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:17, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Suffrage rules

So the suffrage rules at ACE and the repeated version at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections is apparently a bit different, as Cryptic noted at this diff.

Since the intent was to use an already existing election criterion for simplicity, I suggest we keep to ACE criterion as they currently are, than the version we copied in the proposal. Still, it probably needs to be at least discussed. Soni (talk) 10:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I like the idea of using the ACE suffrage criteria exactly. This would make the workflow more efficient for the editor that will generate the suffrage requirements, since they won't need to change any of the requirements compared to ACE. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:16, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the wording in the proposal on the Phase 1 page takes precedence over the list of criteria on the 2021 proposal page. isaacl (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I also say go with the Phase 1 wording. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it should be ECP, same as RFA. Whether you can weigh in on an admin candidate should not be affected by how they chose to run. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:31, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

+1 Queen of Hearts (🏳️‍⚧️ • 🏳️‍🌈) 21:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

@QuicoleJR I think you're conflating two different things. Wikipedia:Administrator elections doesn't define who is eligible to run (but it should), but I would imagine it should be Wikipedia:ECP just like RfA, however for voting; RFA allows any Wikipedia:Extended confirmed access which could be easily gamified in an anonymous vote so the 2 month activity requirement and 150 edits acts as a safeguard, in contrast to RfA where such votes would be ranked on their merits and also srutinized. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:46, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Page protection

In WP:ADE#Period 2: voting would it be a good idea to add this (in green/blue)?

During this period, discussion is closed, and the page will be full protected.

That way, it would help prevent unwanted discussion from continuing. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

"Bump", for this, and for the one just below. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

An edit today did this: [2], but was quickly changed to this: [3]. I think we should discuss it. Personally, I think protection would work better than a template notice, because people don't always pat attention to the latter. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:32, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

We could make a version of Template:Rfap to close the discussion with -- we don't fully protect RfAs once they're over, but the closing template seems to keep nearly everyone out. Giraffer (talk) 20:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

That might work, but for the sake of considering all angles, I want to point to this recent discussion: [4]. Given that this trial will be unfamiliar in comparison to "typical" RfAs, there's a greater chance that someone might still misunderstand, and the discussion I linked to notes how it can be WP:BITEy to correct people once they make such a mistake. At least for the first election, it might perhaps be less messy simply to full-protect. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:24, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm OK with the possibility that the consensus here may not be in agreement with what I think, but I remain concerned about the BITE-related repercussions. I'm picturing a situation in which somebody poses a question to a candidate after the discussion period is closed, and of course the candidate is unaware of it. But the question asker and maybe other editors decide to vote opposed because "the candidate didn't answer questions". We're talking about real people here, not idealized people who notice everything and don't make mistakes. Maybe some uninvolved editors will have to watch the closed discussion pages, and revert late postings and notify the editors who posted them. But I fear that, in practice, this will become more messy than editors who have faith in a hatnote-like template anticipate. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:00, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

It's not hard to spin similar scenarios about the arbitration committee elections, or the open-viewpoint RfA process: questions go unanswered in those situations, which can just be the candidate overlooking them. Questions can also come through other venues: candidates could be asked questions on their talk pages, via email, on Discord, and so forth. Those could be answered (before, during, or after the official discussion period) or go unanswered. It's difficult to guard against the many hypothetical reasons why someone might choose to oppose a candidate. Someone editing a section that is marked as closed with a different background colour seems to be low risk, in my opinion, and as noted by Giraffer, there's no evidence of a problem with RfA (or the arbitration committee elections, for that matter). isaacl (talk) 22:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

It's counter to policy to protect pages in a pre-emptive manner. In addition to the RfA candidate pages, the arbitration committee election pages remain unprotected (much as I'd like to stop people from changing them to the past tense once the election is over). As I recall, there was a discussion not too long ago about protecting the RfA pages. The consensus as always was that there's no history of vandalism, and it would prevent editors from making "just do it" fixes. isaacl (talk) 21:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The most recent such discussion that I'm aware of is the one I linked to just above, but it doesn't have such a consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't referring to a discussion regarding enforcing the extended-confirmed restriction on supporting or opposing a candidate, but a discussion about fully protecting the RfA candidate pages after the requests have been closed. As there is no inherent reason why editing RfA candidate pages should be limited to administrators, policy doesn't support enacting full protection. isaacl (talk) 06:53, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Voter guides

In WP:ADE#Period 1: discussion and questions, would it be a good idea to add this?

Personal voter guides are strongly discouraged, and will not be linked to from the RfA page.

My thinking here is that editors are accustomed to using Secure Poll for ArbCom elections, where voter guides are used, and so someone might get the idea of creating a guide for the admin elections too. But this would be contrary to the intention of keeping "support/oppose" off of the public page. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Noting: [5]. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I removed it for now for the reasons in my edit summary ("not mentioned in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections. policing people's userspaces seems unenforceable"). If this gets more supporters though, feel free to add it back. I am not strongly opposed but I feel it can benefit from more discussion. On the one hand, it could reduce toxicity. On the other hand, it might be weird to have an election without a voter guide. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:27, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I do not have strong opinions either way.

The admin elections does specifically say "No (public) discussion" after 2 day period, so some form of time control over the guides will still be needed, but mostly as a "Do not bypass discussion period" more than anything. Perhaps only allow guides listed while the period is open?

I do find @Tryptofish's "generally discourage guides" the simplest solution though, but we don't have consensus for it. If we don't have that, mentions of guide should be policed at least. Soni (talk) 06:01, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Disclosure: I was the one that added it to the page. Election guides are useful for elections where there is a need to compare candidates (i.e. elections appointing users to a number of seats on a committee), which this is not. Admin elections are basically a bunch of concurrent RfAs with voting on SecurePoll, and so I don't see a real benefit in having the voter guides -- we don't have them for regular RfAs, and I don't think that should change here.

Having voter guides would let people comment on candidates outside of the election pages with the intent of influencing voters. Given how the discussions at RFA2024 lent towards increasing moderation at RfA, this seems like a step in the wrong direction. I don't think we can ban them, but we can certainly discourage them (or ban linking to them). Giraffer (talk) 09:39, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

First, I did this: [6], because that language was really bad. Second, the reason I brought up voter guides in the first place (a long time ago), was because this is an entirely different kind of process than ArbCom elections. ACE-style voter guides would be seriously antithetical to the spirit behind this trial RfA process. As for the argument that we shouldn't police userspace, I'm usually someone who agrees that we shouldn't do that, but this seems to me to be something different, particularly if we are discouraging, rather than prohibiting it. Anyway, I now suggest: "Personal voter guides are discouraged, and will not be linked to from the RfA page." --Tryptofish (talk) 17:58, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Clarification request: Desysoppings

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Clarification request: Desysoppings. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:55, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Phab ticket

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T371454

As requested by WMF Trust & Safety, I've created phab:T371454 to discuss the technical details of setting up the admin election in SecurePoll. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:56, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Who can stand?

I noticed that this page has a "Who can vote?" section but, unless I'm missing something, no information on who can stand for election via this process. Has this been discussed anywhere? – Joe (talk) 07:05, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

As I understand the proposal, it only concerned the selection process, and not the eligibility criteria. Thus the criteria specified in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I § Proposal 25: Require nominees to be extended confirmed apply, and that proposal explicitly stated that the election process was one of the motivations for the proposal. isaacl (talk) 14:04, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Make sense to me. Any objections to adding this to the page? – Joe (talk) 14:21, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps a brief statement such as "Anyone meeting the formal prerequisites described in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship § Nomination standards is eligible to be a candidate"? isaacl (talk) 14:30, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd just copy it over, for clarity. Changes to RfA come at a glacial place, it won't be hard to keep in sync. – Joe (talk) 18:47, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I boldly added a section in line. Merely linking to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship#Nomination standards which is RfA centric and does not answer the simple question of eligibility. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:51, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, for a one-time trial, either way is fine for now. If this becomes a regular occurrence, then I think both the on-wiki discussion process page (RfA) and the secret ballot elections page (this page) can just point to Wikipedia:Administrators § Becoming an administrator. isaacl (talk) 16:41, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we can have a criteria like ACE elections:

a) has a registered account and has made at least 500 mainspace edits 1 month before the election

b) is not prevented from submitting their candidacy by a block or ban Just a random Wikipedian^(talk) 03:04, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

When does the "accepting candidates" phase start?

The trail is a month away and we still have no way for candidates to apply. And how will we let those who are interested (not including those currently in the mailing list) know that applications for candidacy are open? Fanfanboy (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

In terms of letting potential candidates know, posting notices at WP:AN, WP:CENT, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP, and on the talk pages of anyone you know who might be interested is going to be the best way I think. Thryduulf (talk) 14:08, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Fanfanboy. Candidates may only apply during the "call for candidates" phase which will be Oct 8 – Oct 14. However you're right that it's almost election time and I should start coming out of hibernation and working on this. I'll go ahead and draft a WP:MMS with the schedule. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Draft of MMS (mass message) to send out this week

Howdy folks. It occurs to me that we should start getting interested folks ready for admin elections, and an MMS with the schedule would probably be a good way to do this. I propose the following MMS. Any feedback before I send?

Administrator Elections | Updates & Schedule
Administrator elections are in the WMF Trust & Safety SecurePoll calendar and are all set to proceed. We plan to use the following schedule: Oct 8 – Oct 14: Candidate sign-up Oct 22 – Oct 24: Discussion phase Oct 25 – Oct 31: SecurePoll voting phase If you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts before we get started, please post at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections. If you are interested in helping out, please post at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections § Ways to help. There are many redlinked subpages that can be created.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.

This will go out to 66 editors. This can be edited directly at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/MMS/Election schedule. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:47, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I suggest not using all-caps jargon abbreviations. I think it's better just to use the full page names. isaacl (talk) 05:50, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

The opt-out links "here". Can we link "remove yourself from the list" instead for accessibility? Rest looks good. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

 Done. And queued for sending at Wikipedia talk:Mass message senders#Request for mass message delivery: September 9, 2024. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:24, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

It turns out I'm on your mailing list but this notification was a surprise. How was I so out of the loop that I didn't realize that admin elections were actually a thing that was going to happen? I expect that the editors and admins who aren't signed up will be equally surprised in October. Has there been a story about this process in the Signpost yet? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Great idea. Just now I submitted Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Suggestion by Novem Linguae (2024-09-10). Thanks for the tip. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:24, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I have already included a summary of all of RFA2024 in next issue's News and Notes. I can highlight the segment with AELECT more if someone suggests what info needs to be added more. Soni (talk) 12:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Ways to help

If you're interested in helping, it'd be really nice if some of the following pages could mysteriously appear mostly written, and then everyone can go through and make adjustments:

• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/MMS/Call for candidates - use Wikipedia:Administrator elections/MMS/Election schedule for ideas. we're not planning to send any MMSs to the AELECT list after this one, to reduce spam, so this one can mention that it will be the only MMS
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/MMS/Candidate instructions - to be sent just to candidates that sign up, giving them an overview of the process
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Call for candidates - intake page for candidate nominations where they can sign themselves up or be nominated by another editor. needs some instructions and structure. Mention some of the ideas/bullets in Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/MMS/Call for candidates
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase - master list of all candidates that have signed up and their discussions. maybe transclude candidate subpages like WP:RFA does with RFAs?
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template - we need a subst-able template to use on candidate subpages. the candidate subpages could be located somewhere such as Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase/XYZ. I'm thinking this template should be a lot like an RFA template, with a place for candidates to answer the 3 standard questions, and spots for nominators to place nomination statements. i'm leaning towards unstructured discussion though rather than Q1, Q2, etc. we should have clear instructions that these pages will close on X date (the AELECT proposal was strict about having the discussion phase not overlap the voting phase)
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Watchlist messages/Call for candidates - use this or some of the WP:ACE watchlist messages for ideas. must use Template:Display/watchlist
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Watchlist messages/Discussion phase
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Watchlist messages/Voting phase

I think some of these details might end up needing discussion or adjusting. But I think the quickest way to get these discussions going is to create drafts and then tweak from there. Any help is appreciated. Please feel free to WP:BEBOLD and create some of these pages :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:21, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

How do we want to structure the candidate end of things? We could take the ACE route and have the nomination at (hypothetically!) WP:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Giraffer and discussion at WP:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion/Giraffer, or we could go RfA-style and keep it all on the former -- I would prefer to keep it together as much as possible. I like the idea of transcluding all candidate pages (with or without discussion) onto another page, but I'm not sure if I would call it /Discussion phase. Maybe /Candidates/All? It's probably worth working these out before the candidate instructions are created. Giraffer (talk) 18:41, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

My first thought is that people supporting the RFC for elections would have had the ACE elections in mind as their comparison, so unless the discussion specifically and clearly mentioned some kind of divergence from how ACE is run, this trial of "EFA" should probably take "the ACE route" wherever possible. -- asilvering (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

No objections from me. Want to adjust Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Subpages to create to match your idea? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:32, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Nice try! But since I know very very little about ACE I shall leave that to the older and wiser. -- asilvering (talk) 20:54, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

You see? All the wiser people have showed up now. -- asilvering (talk) 19:45, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I have the opposite view—I think most people would have had the current RfA process in mind and so would expect that everything except the voting would run much like RfA. isaacl (talk) 21:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I completely see where you're coming from, but I don't think one process should be presumed to be the main blueprint over the other. ACE should be the model for the proper election bits (timeline, voting, notifications, suffrage, etc.) but for other things I think we can choose, and in this instance, given the novelty of admin elections, it might be less stressful for candidates to work with the RfA page format they've seen used repeatedly before. Giraffer (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Keeping the names of the individual RfA pages the same may furthermore help with scripts analysing historical RfAs? As it shouldn't matter which election somebody becomes an admin in, the ACE naming makes less sense. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:03, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. It's a toss up since we don't have any precedent on what is preferred. The perks of trailblazing . In my super professional opinion, given this, even if not approved, is still a pretty historical thing for enwiki, the simpler we can make it, the better.

I'd say have 1 sub-page to describe how it works (both for candidates and voters) and then another that contains every candidate's templates and full discussion. Having a sub-page for each candidate would be theoretically neater, but we also don't know how many people plan to run, and being able to direct everyone to a single page to participate, when the entire idea of a whole new process to select admins may be inherently overwhelming to the front-facing folks, may be more appealing and garner more participation. To spitball, something like Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Discussion instructions and then Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Discussion phase, and then each candidate gets a level 2 heading, kind of like how the RFA2024 P2 proposals worked. —Sirdog (talk) 01:20, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

With the current RfA process, each candidate request is on a separate page, and they are all transcluded onto the RfA page. I think the simplest approach is to do the same. It keeps the discussion history for each candidate separate and reduces some potential for edit conflicts. Since there will be a fixed number of candidates, there won't be any churn in transclusions when the discussion period starts. isaacl (talk) 02:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Didn't think about the edit conflict issue, good point. Fully agree with your proposed approach. —Sirdog (talk) 01:50, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

These messages and pages should explain clearer that this is like a regular RFA so being nominated by someone is fine (or expected) even. A lot of the watchlist notices for candidates etc say "nominate yourself" which isn't quite right Soni (talk) 01:06, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You just answered the exact question I was thinking of asking. fanfanboy block 01:50, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

If you're willing, feel free to adjust the messages by just editing them. These changes sound fine. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of how we want to format discussion, would it not make the most sense to have the candidate nomination pages at /Candidates/XYZ rather than /Discussion phase/XYZ? Added bonus that /Candidates follows the ACE format, for those preferring we stick closely to that. Giraffer (talk) 10:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Or perhaps they can be in the same place as now: a subpage of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship page. isaacl (talk) 18:11, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae What's the point of Talk page messages and how are they different from the MMS versions? It feels like we can just copy the latter everywhere we need to manually, right? Soni (talk) 12:43, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You're right. In my mind I thought they needed to be different, but now that you point it out they are redundant. I have deleted the redundant talk page message redlinks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:44, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Nominations / nominators

Some of the MMSs and pages were recently modified to say that nominations are OK. How do we want to handle this? Do we want anyone to be able to nominate anyone else without their consent? I think that'd probably not be good (being able to require someone to go through a possibly toxic/stressful process). So I think we at a minimum need a spot for the candidate to accept the nomination, like how RFA currently works.

I do really like some things about nominations. I think it's very beneficial to allow (with the candidate's consent) nominators who endorse the candidacy with a statement, like how RFA currently works.

Does anyone else have thoughts on this? Is everyone OK with basically copying how RFA does it? (there's spots for noms to put a statement but overall noms are optional, and candidate needs to accept the nomination) –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:59, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

As we discussed previously, I agree with copying the current RfA template. Thus there is a nomination section and a section for accepting the nomination (when not self-nominating). isaacl (talk) 22:10, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I think copying the current RfA format is the best way to do it. Giraffer (talk) 22:31, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I made those changes, didn't think to clarify the nominee would have to consent to being nominated (just as in RfA as mentioned in the above comments). My lack of experience in this part of Wikipedia shows :). fanfanboy (block) 13:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

We certainly should not list anyone on the ballot that has not consented to being nominated. Even being nominated for adminship can put someone under scrutiny they may not want to be exposed to. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:41, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks all. I added "Nominating candidates is permitted, but in general you should receive the candidate's consent first before nominating them, and there will be a spot on the candidate page for the candidate to accept the nomination." to the page just now. Feel free to tweak it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

secret election corollary

I didn't pay a lot of attention and I only learned of this after a recent notification at RfA talk, sorry.

This change from public to secret struck me as something that might attract bad actors to try to influence elections. Over the years, I've seen plenty of abusers make large amounts of sockpuppet accounts, but there's only so much they can do with them, typically. If we tell people that there's just going to be an automated check for 150+ mainspace edits and no specific exposure of these accounts' votes whatsoever - that sounds risky, because then a relatively low amount of effort can net a prolific sockpuppeteer, or a meatpuppet network thereof, a relatively easy way to try to game the system.

I just checked the end of the third page of my own contributions - it took me less than three days to make 150+ edits, and I don't recall doing anything substantial in the last three days (something that would have taken any sort of extraordinary effort). If they're five times less efficient than me, that's still just a fortnight per account, so in the ten months of the year before elections there's plenty of time for a person with an axe to grind to make a dozen accounts for this purpose.

I suppose the volume of this could make it inherently noticable, and it's not that likely that someone would go through the trouble. SecurePoll lists of voters being public is also a deterrent, but that still requires that someone pays attention and reads into the list. I'd still be much more comfortable with this if we would e.g. explicitly say that someone reputable is going to do some sort of a statistical analysis on the list of voters to find any suspicious anomalies in the data set, or something like that. We could also have an analysis of both the list of voters and the votes themselves, but with the data anonymized, so as to maintain the secrecy until we actually have a specific anomaly to ponder investigating further. --Joy (talk) 22:06, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

SecurePoll elections always have a scrutineering phase, where some off-wiki checkusers come in and look through the votes to uncover sockpuppetry. We will have that for this one as well (the stewards will do the scrutineering). I believe all previous SecurePoll elections have had this and it has been effective at thwarting this abuse vector. I hope this makes sense and helps assuage your concerns. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:13, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I've expanded the section on what happens post-voting, which hopefully makes it clearer how the scrutineering process is going to work. Giraffer (talk) 22:28, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that's much better. It would be good if we also get a report on this process. --Joy (talk) 12:16, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Prohibiting supports and opposes

The original text of the AELECT proposal was During this time, no bolded !votes should be cast, it should be a clear discussion., which I read as meaning that there should not be bolded supports and opposes, but that I read as meaning that "I plan on voting for this candidate" or "I support this candidate" would be acceptable.

Looks like it keeps getting changed to During this time, no votes or expressions of support/oppose (with or without boldface) are cast. and variations of that.

How strict do we want to be about forcing folks to keep their planned votes secret? I am leaning against this personally. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:06, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm the one who changed it to that wording, so don't think it keeps getting changed to that.

True enough, as you state, the original wording is straight from the 2021 proposal (upon which the 2024 proposal was based). My personal feeling is that it doesn't matter if the expression of support was in bold or not, so I don't think it's a good idea to emphasize that. I appreciate the message was that it's not done the way it is during the traditional open-viewpoint RfA, but I see no meaningful difference between "Support" and "I support the candidate". Maybe there's another way to word this without barring people saying things like "At the moment, I'm leaning towards supporting the candidate." isaacl (talk) 18:28, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

A previous wording said During this time, commenters must not indicate their support or opposition, which I read as being a bit on the stricter side. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:34, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't know how to square the circle: I don't think it's sustainable for anyone moderating the discussion to have to draw fine distinctions between "this wording is a clear vote" and "this wording just falls short enough of a vote to be OK". I think a strict rule on expressions of support/opposition is the only way for the restriction to work. isaacl (talk) 18:47, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, my apologies: I did not remember making that previous change in April, or else I would have opened a section for discussion. isaacl (talk) 18:53, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

First of all, as I pointed out in another section of this talk page, "it should be a clear discussion" is extremely suboptimal. Are we saying that discussion should not be unclear?

I agree with isaacl, that the whole point of a secret ballot process, being trialed to see if it's less stressful for candidates, becomes moot if we also have editors posting public votes. The discussion should be an opportunity to get questions asked and answered, and for editors to point out strengths of the candidate, as well as areas of potential concern. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I also don't think we need to say "(with or without boldface)". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:00, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the intent was that comments should clearly not be votes, but discussion about the candidate's characteristics, not that everyone should be expressing themselves clearly to everyone else.

I also don't think the parenthetical is necessary. I included it as an incremental step in order to preserve the idea that the discussion is not like the support/oppose/neutral sections of the open-viewpoint RfA process, but am happy with omitting it. isaacl (talk) 19:09, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Generating the eligible voter list

Hey @Cyberpower678. How are you? I hope you're doing well. I think we're ready to start working on the administrator elections eligible voter list. The criteria are laid out at Wikipedia:Administrator elections#Who can vote and appear to be identical to WP:ACE.

Question. How many days out do you typically generate this list for ACE? Do you try to wait until the last minute to include more voters, or do you generate it like a month out? If a month out, then I think we can begin. And if last minute, then let's pick a date that is right around when T&S needs the list to configure the poll.

Thanks a lot. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:05, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Sure. Happy to serve. I can generate lists whenever. I can do it right now, but I would always recommend a list minute generation which accounts for vanished users and renamed users, and avoids having to whitelist legitimate during the process. I can reach out to Joe to get the list loaded. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:41, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Help needed creating subpages

Hello talk page watchers. Thank you to everyone who helped with creating the MMS messages and watchlist notices. That really helps a lot. Looks like we still have 3 more subpages to create over at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Subpages to create (note the 3 red links). If anyone would like to take a stab at creating those, it'd be much appreciated. They don't have to be perfect. We can iterate and debate after we have drafts of everything. Thank you very much for any help! –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:18, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Just to confirm, the discussion phase is the same as RfA, just without the Support/Oppose/Neutral sections, right? fanfanboy (block) 21:34, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

It's not set in stone yet, but I think that'd be a good plan for creating the draft. I envision folks adding their name during the call for candidates, then we create RFA-like subpages, for their noms to put their statements and for the candidates to answer the 3 standard questions. Then when the discussion phase opens, folks add questions and general discussion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:41, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Alright I just created a discussion template with a cutdown version of {{RfA/readyToSubmit}}. In my sandbox I also made an edited version of the {{RfA}} template to use the cutdown version (which is also in my sandbox) instead fanfanboy (block) 16:34, 18 September 2024 (UTC)